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If you hang out on HN a lot, I can see how you might think “most companies” are selling your data. But this is hilariously false. Nowhere near “most” companies
by pembrook 5y ago
If you hang out on HN a lot, I can see how you might think “most companies” are selling your data.
But this is hilariously false. Nowhere near “most” companies are selling your data.
In fact, an overwhelmingly vast majority of all businesses don’t sell your data. This is true inside Silicon Valley and even more true outside of the Valley.
Even in Silicon Valley, most companies understand that selling products and services to customers is more profitable than trashing a customer relationship by selling a customer’s personal info to third parties.
- nerdponx 5y agoThey don't sell it. But they entrust a lot of it to disreputable 3rd parties, who exist to track me all over the internet and then try to show me ads.
- OJFord 5y agoBut possibly only because they haven't yet added 'tech' to the hip abbreviation of their industry, and realised that data is valuable, possibly more valuable than whatever their actual business is? I think people use 'selling my data' as an (inaccurate, sure) shorthand for 'collecting so much data about me and I don't really trust them not to sell it at some point'.
- nerdponx 5y agoHanding it over during company acquisition is a form of sale.
- mcherm 5y agoI used to think that was true. But these days, I think a huge portion of companies are placing advertising or user tracking software on their websites produced by advertisers or user tracking vendors who DO capture and sell the data.
- Breza 5y agoYou nailed it. Since the original post is about email, I'll use LiveIntent as an example. Does the New York Times sell my personal data? Maybe, but not egregiously. But they use LiveIntent ad tags in their emails, and those tags leak a ton of data.
- cbm-vic-20 5y ago> In fact, an overwhelmingly vast majority of all businesses don’t sell your data. That's because they haven't figured out how to. Or at least how to do it to make it worthwhile.
- oblio 5y agoAlmost every mom-and-pop store sells your data to Facebook & co. That's what those fidelity cards are for. I didn't realize that either, until recently. Secondly, we're all doomed. I recently read an article about Amazon's ad division being as big as AWS and growing as fast, if not faster: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/14/do-amazon-ads-bring-in-more-cash-than-aws https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/14/do-amazon-... If even AWS isn't bigger and isn't growing faster than ads, what hope is there, really, for someone trying to just sell stuff?
- Breza 5y agoMaybe not directly, but a huge number of companies use tools that involve data selling, even if the company doesn't realize it. Once a marketing guy sent me a LinkedIn tracking tag to put on our website for conversion tracking. It quickly became clear he didn't know anything about what LinkedIn would do with the information. I think that stuff happens all the time.